The majority stayed within the mainstream party but a minority
who supported the Bolshevik path became known as Left
Socialist-Revolutionaries. Maria Spiridonova was a prominent
leader of this group. They, in effect, split from the main party.
The split had not been completed before the Russian Constituent
Assembly elections, the first meaningful electoral test between
the parties in the peasant soviets a few weeks after the Assembly
elections showed the parties had roughly equal support in the
peasantry